Firefox Beyond the Box

So, you've downloaded Firefox and love what you see. If you haven't extended it or modified it in any way, "You ain't seen nothin' yet!" (to quote Al Jolson). Some of the more fun things you can do with Firefox are to extend it, customize it, and tweak it. Meryl Evans walks you through a few steps so you can be more comfortable taking Firefox beyond its basic setup.

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You've downloaded Firefox and love what you see. If you haven't
extended it or modified it in any way, "You ain't seen nothin'
yet!" (to quote Al Jolson). Some of the more fun things you can do with
Firefox are to extend it, customize it, and tweak
it.

If those three words freak you out, relax. Take a couple of breaths. For a
long time, folks thought Firefox was a browser for techies. Yes, it has techie
stuff that happens behind the scenes, but that doesn't affect your ability
to have a great browsing experience. I'll walk you through a few steps to
become more comfortable with taking Firefox beyond its basic setup.

Extending Firefox

Some of the coolest things about Firefox are its
extensions,
which add more features, capabilities, and options to the browser. Rather than
including every extension to the browser install and giving everyone features
that they may or may not need, it's better to install it yourself—you
get what you need without dealing with browser bloat.

Occasionally, when clicking on an extension to install it, Firefox asks how
to open the file. When this happens, close the box and click the link again.
After installing an extension, close and reopen Firefox before using it so it
can pick up the extension on startup.

CAUTION

A word of warning. Sometimes extensions cause problems with Firefox, leading
it to crash or not work right. To address the problem, disable one extension and
reload Firefox. Use Firefox as you normally would. If it crashes again, disable
another extension. Repeat until Firefox behaves.

Some extension authors' pages provide information on extensions that may
not work when loading the author's extension.

xMirror

Every extension has its own Web page and that's the best place to
download it because the latest version publishes there first. It may take time
before the version arrives at Mozilla or other Web sites housing extensions.
xMirror
adds a drop-down list to the Extensions window linking to the extension
libraries. The Web site has a few other extensions.

SessionSaver

In writing this, I installed the extensions to be sure that they are A-OK. It
gets old to close Firefox every time I load a new one and then reopen the
previously loaded Web pages.
SessionSaver
puts an end to this nonsense because it restores the pages you had open before
closing Firefox or when it crashes.

AutoCopy

How do you copy text from a Web page? The most common way is to highlight the
text, press CTRL+V, and press CTLR+P. You can do this in one step using
AutoCopy.
Once you highlight the text, it's copied to the Clipboard.

TabBrowser Preferences

Tab browsing is a favorite feature for many users. Take it to another level
with
TabBrowser Preferences.
You can control how Firefox handles links, move the tab bar to the bottom of the
browser, and manage tab focus (when clicking on a new link, select whether the
current tab stays in front or if the new tab steals focus).

DictionarySearch

Expand your vocabulary with
DictionarySearch,
which does exactly what its name implies: It looks up a word in a Web page or
email in an online dictionary. After installing DictionarySearch, all you have
to do is select the word, right-click, and select Dictionary Search
for....

AutoForm

Do you like Internet Explorer's capability to automatically fill in
forms for you? Add this feature to Firefox with
AutoForm.

Adding extensions takes little time and provides timesaving features to
Firefox. Expand Firefox's horizons and explore the extension libraries.